Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Union boss beats Haley pinata, scores a YouTube hit

Politics is the realm of the easily offended. The kneejerking jerk-offs. The stone-throwing glass-housers. The insincere spittle-spewing spinmeisters of righteous indignation.

And because of these detestable flecks of toilet dust, we have to endure one nonsensical bit of outrage after another.

The latest involves the now-retired head of the S.C. AFL-CIO. At a party last weekend held by the S.C. Progressive Network — a group's whose relevancy is, well, nearly irrelevant — AFL-CIO President Donna Dewitt beat the living shit out of a piñata on which some cheeky bastard placed a photo of S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley. Yawn.

Yesterday, the video surfaced on the interwebs and suddenly became the contro du jour, with folks both in the Palmetto State and elsewhere weighing in the matter. Not surprisingly, Red State's Erick Erickson, a Nikki Haley fluffer if there ever was one, took a moment from squeezing another intellectually dishonest soundbite out of his ass on CNN to weigh in on the matter, proclaiming that, gosh darn it, life just isn't fair, especially if you're a Republican:

Were Nikki Haley a Democrat, the media would make this the front page story across the nation — racist tea partiers beating up the minority governor in effigy.

But no, Nikki Haley is a Republican minority. The media views most stories like this in terms of victim and victimizer and a minority who signs on with the Republicans has, in the mind of so many reporters in America, chosen to join the victimizer class. Therefore, when she herself is a victim, it’s just payback.

It’s sad that this would be the case, but the media has for decades shown us how they operate. What would be front page for days in a row on the New York Times were Nikki Haley a Democrat will be barely covered.

But on the bright side, we lose one less news cycle to a story of union violence and keep the focus on how Barack Obama is destroying the economy.

Two things.

One, if a white Tea Partier was motivated by clearly stated racial prejudices, then, well, that would be news. If it was only assumed that the Tea Partier in question was motivated by racial prejudices, it would not be. That Nikki Haley is an Indian American and Donna Dewitt a white is irrelevant here since there is no indication that Dewitt is a racist or that her actions were racially motivated. Erickson knows this, but he chooses to ignore it. Instead, he chooses to play the Democrats-are-the-true-racists card. Choad.

Two, if "union violence" involves swatting a piñata, then maybe we should all seriously reconsider rethinking this thing we call a children's birthday party. I don't know about you, but I certainly don't want Erickson writing about my daughter's upcoming birthday bash. She's scared of clowns and Chris Hansen.

But enough about Erick Erickson. The point of the matter is that beating the shit out of a piñata bearing your political enemy's face is an accepted and celebrated form of political speech. It's commonplace.

See folks, piñatas are fine. And so is burning an effigy of your enemy, comparing him to Hitler, and Photoshopping his face to look like the Joker. Those digs are all just par for the course. (It's also fine to call your enemies a cock stain, a skid mark, or a frothy mug of santorum, but then again, I play a little differently.)

That said, if you call your political enemy something that expressly denotes and denigrates their racial or heritage — let's say like calling them "Sikh Jesus" like Phil Bailey did or a "raghead" like Jake Knotts — then you've committed a party foul and, frankly, somebody needs to escort you to the door and kick your ass to the curb.